Pope Francis draws record crowd of 6 million in Manila

Pope Franciswrapped up a five-day visit to Asia's most Catholic nation on Sunday, drawing 6 million devotees to a Manila waterfront park, the largest ever crowd for a papal event. The Argentine-born Pope was stunned by the huge size of the crowd and Pope-mania frenzy, telling the Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, "I cannot fathom the faith of the simple people".

Using his visit to the Philippines to highlight themes that are a major focus of the Catholic church, Pope Francis, 78, addressed climate change and population control and spoke out against "poverty, ignorance and corruption" in the country where 25 million people live on 60 cents a day or less, according to government data. He also lamented male chauvinism, saying men should listen to women more. The Pope made the impromptu remarks during a youth rally at a co-ed Catholic university in the Philippine capital, Manila, after he noted that four of the five people who addressed him on stage were male.

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Pope draws record crowd of millions in Manila

Pope Francis celebrates mass at Manila's Rizal Park with around six million Filipinos, the largest number ever for a papal event.

"Women have much to tell us in today's society. At times we men are too 'machista'," he said, using the Spanish term for male chauvinists.

"(We) don't allow room for women but women are capable of seeing things with a different angle from us, with a different eye. Women are able to pose questions that we men are not able to understand," he said to more applause.

Pope Francis waves from the steps of his aircraft as he leaves the Philippines for Rome on Monday. Photo: Getty Images

Pope Francis has said that, while the Roman Catholic Church's ban on women priests is definitive, he wants to appoint more nuns and other women to senior positions in the Vatican.

During his visit to the Philippines, the Pope visited street children and travelled to typhoon-hit Tacloban city on Leyte island to celebrate a mass in wild weather and meet survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest storm on record that devastated the central Philippine islands in 2013.

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Manila city officials said the 6-million turnout for the mass surpassed the previous world record for a papal event of 5 million during a mass by Pope John Paul II at the same venue in 1995.

The country's largest-ever security operation protected the Pope who triumphantly rode to Sunday's mass in a specially made open-air jeepney, the most common form of transport in the Philippines.

"Only when we are able to cry are we able to come close to responding to your question", he said. "Those on the margins cry. Those who have fallen by the wayside cry. Those who are discarded cry ... but those who are more or less living a life without need, we don't know how to cry."

Pope Francis received a rapturous reception wherever he went, cementing the Philippines as the church's bastion in Asia. Eighty per cent of the former Spanish colony's 100 million people are Catholics.

Tens of thousands of people in Manila crowded his motorcade route on Monday morning for a final glimpse of Pope Francis, and he smiled and waved to them from an open-air "popemobile". President Benigno Aquino then led a red-carpet farewell on the tarmac at the airport, as children sang and danced, before the Pope gave a final wave to the Philippines and boarded his plane to return home.